Avengers Assemble with the Guardians of the Galaxy Against Thanos

We'll spare you the obvious comments about the Marvel movie universe that go with this one, although there's a minor spoiler for The Avengers buried in the story below if you haven't seen it already.

Comic Book Resources is reporting that the Guardians of the Galaxy will join The Avengers in their "new reader-accessible" series Avengers Assemble, in which Thanos recently appeared. The team will team up with The Avengers to face down Thanos in Avengers Assemble #6, out in August.

Two characters who are key members of the Guardians of the Galaxy--Adam Warlock and Drax the Destroyer--are longtime thorns in Thanos' side whose entire history is more or less wrapped up around battling the mad titan, so it's not particularly surprising. That said, it's been a while since fans have seen some of these characters and it's hard to ignore the implications that this might have for a Guardians of the Galaxy feature film, after Disney XD's Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes featured a guest-appearance by the spacefaring superteam the same week that The Avengers opened theatrically and moviegoers got their first glimpse of Thanos.

"We do have both oars in the water," Marvel SVP of Publishing Tom Brevoort told CBR. "We knew that [Thanos] scene was going to be at the end of the movie. Certainly Brian knew it. We built the story in Avengers Assemble accordingly to take advantage of that, though we couldn't say all of what we were doing two months ago. We could say how Avengers Assemble had the movie cast and was a good entry point for people coming out of the film considering the regular Avengers books are in the midst of Avengers vs. X-Men. But we couldn't actually say too much about why and how. Now, fortunately, we can."

Writer Brian Michael Bendis actually told Eric Ratcliffe's Why I Love Comics podcast last week that he didn't realize until he got his copy that the Avengers Assemble featuring the Thanos reveal would hit the same week as The Avengers was in theaters.

Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige has said that the Guardians of the Galaxy are one of the film properties he'd most like to pursue, which makes sense. If Marvel Studios is going to be making two films per year, you don't want every single one of them to be a superhero movie that feels very similar to the one that came before it, and characters like the Guardians of the Galaxy or Doctor Strange could provide a much-needed breather where the look and feel of the film could be very different but still tie into Marvel's signature Avengers brand of filmmaking.